Currently: CIO, Cisco Systems
With a background in both IT and finance, Jacoby is fluent in technology and knows how to talk to business leaders. As CIO of one of the largest enterprise companies in the world, Jacoby helps shape Cisco products by rolling them out internally -- and Cisco's 65,000 employees, many of them techies, can be her harshest critics -- before they're made available to customers. She was an early adopter of BYOD (bring your own device), virtualization, and the cloud. But it's communication, not technological know-how, that's key to doing her job, Jacoby has said. Perhaps it is no wonder that she's rumored to be on the shortlist of folks to succeed CEO John Chambers.
--Michal Lev-Ram
We invited readers to draft their own roster, and asked management experts and sitting CEOs to weigh in too. Here are the results of our first online fantasy game.
